Catching Cats
by jennetsnow
Summary: An OCFaramir romance, with an actual backstory and plot. Shocking, isn't it.
1. Hay Girl

Disclaimer: I don't own Lord of the Rings. This should be blindingly obvious. I'm not profiting from this, and in fact, my heroine Maerwyn may turn into a Mary Sue of the worst variety. We shall see. Reviews and constructive criticism are welcome.  
  
She held her breath, staring into the dark corner before her, a pair of baleful yellow eyes glaring back at her. The little girl stood stock- still, though her face itched due to the presence of the copious amounts of hay sticking into her brownish hair, giving her a strong resemblance to a particularly filthy blonde porcupine. Something moved in the corner, and the girl dashed forward, making a desperate (and ill-advised) grabbing motion toward the owner of the yellow slit-pupil eyes. She received a beautiful set of clawmarks on her arm for her pains, and the cat took his opportunity to shoot out of the loft, leaping to a pile of wooden crates in one corner and from thence to the ground, rounding the corner out of the building with frightening speed.  
  
"Rats," said the little girl, rather put out at losing her favorite pet—or victim, as the case so often was. She checked her arm, which had already begun to drip droplets of blood onto her beaten up, mudstained trousers. She was going to get into trouble for that one for certain.  
  
On the other hand, she reasoned to herself, there was no use in getting into trouble without having the fun that went along with trouble in the first place, was there?  
  
Her thoughts were interrupted by a shout from below. "Maerwyn! Are you torturing that cat again?" A stocky man covered with dust and dirt from the stables stood looking up at her, in all her scratched-up, hayhaired glory.  
  
"... no," answered Maerwyn truthfully. She hadn't managed to catch the cat, after all.  
  
"Well come down. You were supposed to be back at the Hall by noon, or didn't you remember you had guests to clean up for?"  
  
"Guests? Oh, you mean the Steward and his retinue," the girl said, giving the "r" in retinue an exaggerated rolling sound.  
  
"Yes, I mean the Steward and his retinue," answered the older man, scratching the back of his head. "You had better go, or your nursemaid'll have an attack of the nerves again."  
  
"Oh, HER," scoffed the little girl. She put a hand to her brow and in a mocking voice said, "'Your hair! Ruined! Your dress! Ruined! Your stockings! Undarned! I... I think I shall faint! Oh dear, oh dear, what shall I ever tell your father!'"  
  
"Don't you mock your elders, girl. Not even if they are silly. And get out of that hayloft or I'll have to come and bring you down held over my shoulder like a sack of flour."  
  
The little girl frowned sullenly, but slithered down the ladder to the ground with all the acumen of a professional acrobat. "Well all right then. But if they make me wear that lacy pink dress again I'm going to... I'll... I'm going to put a toad in the Lord Steward's wineglass tonight." She stuck her tongue out at him, and then dashed out of the stable, nearly bowling over the little stableboy on her way back to the Hall. 


	2. Take It Like a Straw Man

Disclaimer: I don't own Lord of the Rings. This should be blindingly obvious. I'm not profiting from this, and in fact it began as an attempt to make a Mary Sue that wasn't, well, hideously unreadable and atrocious. Constructive criticism is welcome and in fact, requested. In this chapter Maerwyn Sue suffers a few of the consequences of being a tomboy and a horrible brat.  
  
"Ow!" gasped Maerwyn, turning an enraged glance at her nurse, who, having long become used to such things, ignored it. "Ouch, do you have to brush so hard?" she added, changing tactics to appeal to the soft-heartedness of her nursemaid. The girl's eyes had begun to water.  
  
The nurse, impervious to sympathy tactics, continued brushing. "The straw has to come out. Let this be a lesson to you, Maerwyn." She tugged at a snarl with a bit of straw embedded deeply in it, and the little girl yelped, watching herself and the nurse in the mirror in front of her.  
  
Her skin was pink and raw, because she'd already been scrubbed with painful thoroughness, as her nurse lectured and lectured her on the follies of gadding about, gadding about with boys, and gadding about in the stables. What gadding about really consisted of Maerwyn had never really managed to find out, and did not want to ask because she had the vague feeling that it was something she already ought to know. She definitely did not "gad about" with boys, but her protests were drowned out by a reminder from the nurse about how awful her darning was, how she could not sew a straight line, and how she did not even know enough heraldry to identify her own banner among a host's.  
  
When the hair had finally been brushed through, so that it hung down her back, the nurse took out the hated rose-colored dress. "Oh noooooooo..." moaned Maerwyn, and the nurse's lips tightened into a thin line.  
  
"Oh, yes," she said, utterly determined to make her young charge presentable for once. She slipped the pink dress over the little girl's head. "You will not humiliate your father's house tonight at the banquet. You will prove a credit to it, and to my tutelage. You will not put a spider on the high table, or a mouse, or a snake. You will not spill wine on anyone, and you will not pretend to be a deaf-mute or a half-wit. You will, for once in your selfish life, behave."  
  
Maerwyn gaped at the mirror, finally realizing that the nurse had as much contempt for her as Maerwyn herself had for the nurse. It came as a shock to her, and she stared at her reflection in the mirror: A plain little girl with a snub nose and mouse-brown hair, with a complexion reddened from scrubbing and two tear streaks down her cheeks from all the hair-tugging. More tears were threatening, and Maerwyn reached up with one of her rose- clad arms to wipe them away. She thought better of it at the last moment, and pulled a handkerchief from the rough-carved wooden dresser before her, wiping her eyes.  
  
"I will," she vowed fiercely, startling her nurse. "I WILL behave."  
  
The nurse paused for a moment, looking into the mirror. One of her favorite subjects for lecturing of late had been Maerwyn's habit of wiping her face on her sleeve. "Well, I hope so." She patted the small girl on the head, and began to braid her hair, taking a little trouble to be more gentle this time. 


End file.
